There is currently a strong El Niño event, for which there are significant impacts around Hawaii and the Pacific Islands, including extended drought conditions, enhanced risk of damaging tropical cyclones, increased risk of coral bleaching, and possible spread of vector borne disease and illness.

The evolution and duration, strength and impacts of individual El Niño events can vary, in some cases greatly. This makes constant monitoring and awareness extremely important for decision makers across multiple sectors. Impacts also vary by island, and these seven fact sheets outline different physical impacts on different sectors and projected trends in relevant climate variables for Hawaii, American Sāmoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, the eastern and western Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a recurring climate pattern involving changes in the temperature of waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and the patterns of sea level pressure, lower- and upper-level winds, and tropical rainfall across the Pacific basin. This irregular oscillation between warm and cool patterns, referred to as the ENSO cycle, directly affects rainfall distribution in the tropics and can have a strong influence on weather across the Pacific basin.

The following El Niño fact sheetsfor Hawaii and the Pacific Islands were created by the NOAA Hawaii and Pacific Islands ENSO Tiger Team, and are immediately available for download and distribution to policy makers, natural resource managers, community members, and interested stakeholders. For more information, please contact the Pacific Region Climate Officer of the Pacific ENSO Applications Climate Center (peac@noaa.gov).

2015 El Niño and Pacific Islands Fact Sheets

Cover image: Sea surface temperature anomaly on 11/12/2015, visualization from http://earth.nullschool.net/ by Cameron Beccario, Real Time Global SST from MMAB / EMC / NCEP

A blue ribbon panel will meet to discuss future landfill options on Oahu. In the meantime, the state is still investigating last month’s medical waste spill at Waimanalo Gulch. One key question is why weren’t storm runoff systems built before rains pounded the Gulch? To get a sense of how it’s supposed to work, HPR’s Ben Markus visited a nearby landfill that managed to weather the storms. [source: Hawaii Public Radio]

On October 6, 2010, WFO Honolulu at their “wet season” press conference provided an outlook which indicated La Nina, wetter than normal conditions, and possibly of heavy rainfall events during January — April 2011. Based upon this forecast, PVT Land Company Ltd., spent $300,000 upgrading their storm runoff system for heavy rain situations at their privately owned landfill operating on Oahu’s west coast since 1985. The PVT landfill is a construction and demolition material solid waste landfill that is also licensed to accept asbestos-containing materials and petroleum-contaminated soil. Following a very heavy rain event on January 12, 2011, the landfill was able to open the next day because of the previous preparations they had completed saving thousands of dollars and possible very high Environmental Protection Agency fines. A nearby municipal landfill was closed by Environmental Protection Agency for 2 weeks and will face EPA fines after the event because the landfill released storm runoff contaminated by medical waste and other debris into the ocean. Syringes, vials and other waste washed up on nearby beaches for days. ( Listen to story at http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/content/pvt-landfill-prepared-storms)

Prepared by Jim Weyman (Director, Pacific ENSO Application Center) based on a Hawaii Public Radio Story by Ben Markus.